Backstage at the Ferragamo Fall/Winter 2012 runway show, models exuded the enchanted mythos of the collection
designed by Creative Director, Massimiliano Giornetti. With gilded
gossamer gowns, mesmerizing zodiac jewelry, and hand embroidered velvet
bags rich with the innovative craftsmanship of Ferragamo's legacy, the
Fall/Winter collection has already become a front row favorite for the
jet setting fashionista.

Giornetti explored “the idea of
craftsmanship,” exemplified by the house since Salvatore himself began
creating exquisite footwear in the 1920s, in the lavish, scrolling wool
embroideries, subtly traced in tone-on-tone on an ebony velvet topcoat
or riding boot, and in the thick frogging details embellishing roll-neck
sweaters. Pencil skirts and shapely tops were seemingly composed of
horizontal bands of vari-textured ribbons, and some of those airy Gitane
skirts had insertions of delicate, pale-gold lace at the hem, or
sprinklings of fine bead embroidery picking out the boteh motifs. The
charm was in the details; in the exquisite nineteenth-century-looking
jewelry including cameo necklaces, and pendants attached to velvet
ribbon chokers; the lattice-laced sandals tied with dainty tassels; and
the evening minaudière shaped and embellished like a Fabergé egg.

View last additions to the Salvatore Ferragamo Autumn/Winter 2012/13

Advertising Campaign shot by Mikael Jansson

The location is intriguing and mysterious: the Russian Embassy in Berlin, with its regal atmosphere and the precious, refined rooms. There, Salvatore Ferragamo stages the two souls of the idea of woman he has created for the FW 2012/13 season: rigorous and sensual, accompanied by a sophisticated and cosmopolitan man.

The campaign evokes an intense role play: on the one hand we have the femininity of Kate Moss, a contemporary Tzarina slumped on a dormeuse and almost wrapped by tapestries and arrases, on the other we have a cryptic beauty, Karmen Pedaru, and then the magnetic charm of Sean O'Pry.

Before his show, Roberto Cavalli
paraded around the catwalk with Lupo, his German shepherd. It was an
outlandish image, but not as outlandish as the tiger pattern on the
catwalk (which was composed of 40,000 flowers). And not nearly
as outlandish as the clothes that subsequently made their way through
the flowers. In its more-is-never-enough excess, this was the most
impeccably styled, luxurious collection Cavalli has ever shown. But it
also mastered the power of illusion to achieve a de trop, Fellini-esque
grandeur. So when Naomi Campbell sailed down the catwalk barely
harnessed into a waterfall of purple sequins, it seemed like the only
appropriate full stop to a show that had turned nature on its head,
painting python with big cat motifs, printing mink with python, turning
glossy ponyskin into scaly croc, creating, in other words, an
extraordinary new menagerie, one worthy of Nero himself.

The artisanship was such that the clothes needed to be seen close up,
and better still, felt. The bubble skirts that opened the show, for
example, were made up of fur that was pieced together like feathers.
They were shown with T-shirts so densely beaded they could have been a
new kind of reptile skin. By the time the skirts reached the floor, they
were mink lasered to look like croc, or python painted in
tiger stripes. There were a couple of other major silhouettes. The first
consisted of extremely feminine tiers of mousseline. (One dress seemed
to re-create a crocodile skin in glitteringly glazed scales, but who
would be crazy enough to dare such an eyeball-straining piece of
embroidery? Need we ask?) The second was a rock 'n' roll dandy-tailored
suit, with peaked shoulders and long, flared legs. Every outfit was a
book, or at least a movie.